Ice Station Death

by Gustavo Bondoni

  “Good. If you’re willing, I’d love for you to participate in the operation. The men can get nervous, and having some older and cooler heads around is always a good thing. If possible, I’d prefer to avoid having a nervous sailor pull a trigger and cause an international incident with China.”

  Javier sighed inwardly. After pulling him away from his leave in order to make it to the base a few days early, it figured that the Navy would decide to go off on a tangent.

  The captain appeared to be a mind reader as well as a ship’s captain. “Don’t worry. We’re only supposed to stay on site until the crew is safe and under arrest. Shouldn’t add more than a few hours to the trip.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Well, we’re expecting them to be more welcoming than these ships usually are. They did send the distress call after all, which means they’re probably in some kind of serious trouble, but I still want to check it out before getting too close. We’re sending up one of the Sea Kings.”

  The two large helicopters were hangered just ahead of the heliport. Javier was surprised to learn that the cash-strapped Argentine Navy had allotted two of them to the Irizar, and said so.

  Celmi chuckled. “This trip is a PR event. We couldn’t allow the boat to sail without its full complement of support vehicles, could we? Besides, most of the other ships big enough to stage them are in port. What else were we going to use them for?” The captain winked. “Between you and me, these were a gift from the US government. The ones we used to fly were destroyed in the fire. I think that’s the main reason why the government allowed your friend the spy to sail with us. A spy for a couple of choppers. Sounds like a little too good a deal if you ask me.”

  Javier tended to agree with the man’s assessment, but kept his mouth shut. “Where do you want me?”

  “Look for Lieutenant Yoma. He’ll assign you to a boarding team.”

  ***

  As always, the military practiced the doctrine of ‘Hurry up and wait’, so once Javier reached the boarding team he’d been assigned to, he learned that they would be reaching the stricken vessel in three hours at the earliest, so he had some time to burn.

  He spent that span watching the team pull the Sea King out of its hangar and clear the decks. The big helicopter, painted grey with a vertical yellow tail stripe somehow looked just right taking off from the deck of a ship and striking out over a slate-grey ocean.

  Then the wait began in earnest. Boredom didn’t have time to settle in, however. They’d been seated around a small table about to break out a pack of cards to play Truco, the typical card game enjoyed by Argentines, when one of the men came in.

  “The helicopter’s coming back.”

  “Already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the ship sink? Did the chopper get fired on?”

  “I don’t know. I just heard that it was returning without any additional passengers.”

  Javier knew exactly what would happen next. As a reasonably young officer who wasn’t in the formal chain of command of any of the men who’d been assigned to board with him if there was trouble, he was the natural person to go fetch news.

  The Argentine military, in some regards, was much less structured and formal than that of other nations… and sailors on what was usually used as nothing more military than a research vessel, even less so. They immediately asked if he could find out what was up.

  Javier sighed, bowing to the inevitable. The ship was still more than an hour away and he preferred to know what he was walking into than to sit around being begged at by a bunch of sailors.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what they tell me.”

  The men cheered good-naturedly. They clearly weren’t worried about the Korean fishermen; these boats always did the same thing. They ran until someone fired a warning shot, and then surrendered. Even the biggest factory ships used the same pattern, then paid their fines and were escorted out of Argentine waters. The smart ones stayed clear of the country in the future. Argentina was getting too good at catching them.

  Javier arrived at the bridge as the pilots were beginning their debriefing, so he listened.

  “We saw no one on board, sir,” the naval lieutenant who’d led the exploration team was explaining. “The ship didn’t look too badly damaged, all we could see were some broken windows and some smoke from amidships on the port side.”

  “That’s a pretty typical ploy. They always go belowdecks when they run.”

  “This one wasn’t running. The ship appears to be locked in a turn that describes a big circle. We watched them for a few minutes and all they did was simply go around and around.”

  “You didn’t send anyone down?”

  “I thought it better not to. If they’re waiting below to ambush us, why give them a chance?”

  “I agree. No need to rush. If they make a run for it, they’re screwed. Now that we’ve made visual contact, we can get air support if necessary.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to run, sir.”

  “We’ll see. I hope not. We really, really don’t need another international incident. The Chinese are still mad about the boat we sank last time. They don’t like small navies getting uppity.” He dismissed everyone.

  Javier returned to his men. “Not much to tell, men. The chopper didn’t see anyone on deck and flew back. They don’t think the ship is going to run… and if they do, they gave me the impression that they’re scrambling airplanes to sink her before she reaches international waters.”

  “Do you think we’ll board?”

  “Yeah. I do. She’s not going to run.”

  Now the silence got a bit more tense. It was one thing to joke around when a civilian ship was still a couple of hours away and would do the typical runner… and quite another to be approaching a ship that might be lying in wait.

  They played a couple of hands of truco, but no one’s heart was in it. Everyone kept glancing out the forward-facing window, trying to catch a glimpse of their quarry.

  Finally, a cadet who wouldn’t be joining the boarding crew jumped up. “There,” he said.

  They crowded around to look, but the speck in the distance could have been anything.

  But the man’s young eyes hadn’t deceived him. The speck slowly resolved itself into a ship, white with rusty streaks down the side, probably refuse from the catch. It appeared to be even longer than the icebreaker, but much lower. Torn nets straggled beside it, blown by the wind and waves.

  The helicopter’s description had been spot on. The ship was under power, but still gave the impression of drifting aimlessly.

  “Yeah, definitely a poacher.”

  With that identification, the excitement level increased. There were few things Argentina’s Navy liked more than to catch someone in the act of stealing from the rich fisheries on the continental shelf.

  Javier didn’t share their enthusiasm. Something about that ship made him nervous. Maybe it was the way the loose netting fluttered in the wind, or maybe it was the sheer lack of life on deck. Whatever it was, he felt a shiver run up his back as he looked over the sea at the empty decks.

  A naval lieutenant popped his head into their staging room. “All right, men, it’s time.”

  Two of the Irizar’s lifeboats were powered, and Javier’s team was on the second. The crew of the first was more heavily armed and contained the only four men aboard with marine infantry experience. If anything went wrong, they would be the ones to deal with any resistance.

  The second boatload of men would come aboard once the deck was clear and help with what might become a cabin-by-cabin search of the ship. Meanwhile, the Irizar would cover them with her 40mm guns.

  Javier watched the team from the first boat send grappling ladders up the side and climb aboard. It was a tense few moments, but soon, the marines waved down to the rest of the crew to come aboard. The sailor in command of Javier’s lifeboat eased forward.

  They climbed aboard, Javier leading the way.r />
  He shuddered. The deck was as empty as they’d expected, dirty and unkempt.

  The rust-colored streaks to the side, he now saw, were the end of long trails of what looked like blood.

  Chapter 4

  Javier walked across the deck of the fishing vessel. The metal had once been painted white and had also, at some time, possessed non-skid surfacing. Age and disinterest had cured it of that. In many places, it was rubbed through to the bare metal.

  “What do you think that is?” Javier said, pointing out the reddish streaks to one of the sailors who’d come aboard with him.

  The man studied it and shrugged. “I’ve never been on a factory ship like this one before, but on a regular fishing boat, those are the marks where the discarded catch gets pushed off the ship. Guts and heads and bits that aren’t used as well as the non-commercial species.”

  Javier nodded. It made sense, and he began to get his breathing under control. The marks had seemed like blood to him and for some reason that had startled him more than a soldier should be at the sight of gore. Of course, that’s probably exactly what they were, but his imagination had made them look like human blood, not the effluents of fish.

  “We’ve secured the bridge,” the naval officer in charge of the lead team told him. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone there, and the place is pretty torn up. Once we get the crew off, someone with a lot more salvage knowledge than we have is going to need to do a lot of work to get this one back on course. It will likely empty its bunkers before anyone gets it facing forward. Also, we found some blood on the floor.” He shrugged. “Right now, we’re working on the assumption that the crew had a falling out amongst themselves, so be very careful when you search the ship.”

  “How do you want to do it?”

  “I left a man on the bridge, but we think most people are going to be hiding below decks. I think the best thing would be for you to take the processing plant in the bow, and we’ll take engine room and pump rooms in the aft. We think if anyone’s hiding, they’ll be hiding there, so best to have the marines present. We’ve already checked the cabins. They’re empty.”

  Javier headed towards the bow. A covered metal stairway led downwards, and creaked under his weight. All of his men had flashlights, but the factory floor was illuminated, albeit not overly bright.

  He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked around. Bins lined one side of the wall and fed into some kind of machine. By its configuration, Javier guessed that it was likely a press, to turn the right kind of fish into compact bars. Both bins and machine were painted a dull industrial green.

  Opposite them was a conveyor belt about two feet wide that ran the length of the room. Another belt ran above head-height and dumped its contents in a small room off to the side.

  Javier imagined this room must normally have been cramped and bustling as men jockeyed in the confined spaces to sort the catch coming from above and place it onto the right conveyor or bin. The noise of the belts and the heat of the machines would have made it an oppressive place to work.

  He wondered how people could stand to live and work in these conditions. One of the reasons he’d become a soldier and not a sailor—against family tradition—was that he hated the cramped, tiny spaces of the Navy. Give him an open field any day, even if he had to run ten kilometers in it.

  Everything was as still as the grave. Deep shadows lurked where the light failed to penetrate, under conveyor trusses and between machines and pipes. A solid layer of grime covered the floor below the belts.

  It looked completely mundane, if a bit disgusting. He certainly wouldn’t want to eat a fish product that had been initially processed in this place. The sheer dinginess began to calm his anxiety. This wasn’t a place for an ambush. This was a place to process fish.

  Nevertheless, a sense of something wrong, something essential that was missing, nagged at him. It was right there, like an image at the edge of his vision or a word at the tip of his tongue. It was an obvious thing, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He knew he’d feel like an idiot when he finally nailed it down. All he really knew was that whatever was causing the feeling, it wasn’t letting him relax and concentrate on the task at hand.

  Thinking about it, he’d had a variation of the feeling since he boarded the Irizar. Not only was there something obvious missing on this ship, the entire mission had something wrong with it… and he also couldn’t figure that out. He put it down to nerves.

  He called: “It looks clear, come on down.”

  If an army of enraged sailors had been waiting with fish cleavers, the factory would have been the ideal place for them. Nooks and crannies, dark spaces between pieces of equipment, and locked cupboards abounded. The general feel made Javier think of an industrial kitchen in a submarine.

  They searched the main room, and found nothing. No people, no clues… and no fish.

  “Looks like they weren’t having much luck this trip.”

  “They probably had their problem as soon as they crossed into the Argentine area. Not much point in fishing anywhere but over the continental shelf. The yields are much higher here.”

  The soldier smirked. “Yeah, if the Coast Guard doesn’t sink you.”

  “Of course.”

  Smaller rooms tucked into the space available inside the hull opened up at odd angles. Javier assumed that each space had a specific use, but they all looked the same to him: cramped, full of pipes and painted over in the same stupid green, too bright to be military, too subdued to be attractive.

  His men, the edge completely rubbed from their fear by the simple fact that nothing had happened since they boarded, chattered. Javier let them: if anyone was waiting around the next bend, they already knew they were coming; silence wouldn’t be much additional help. And telling them to concentrate on the job at hand wouldn’t do much good either, he imagined. These weren’t really fighting troops—they’d been trained, but that only went so far after a few years where any fighting was done by the guys who controlled the ship’s cannon and your enemies were cowed civilian sailors who’d likely just been shot at with said guns.

  “It doesn’t look like there was a fight here. And the ship’s intact.”

  “So what happened to all the Koreans? Did they suddenly decide to jump into the sea?”

  “I wouldn’t laugh at that. If they did, they probably had a good reason. What’s on this ship that would make them prefer to drown or freeze in the South Atlantic rather than face it?”

  A short silence descended on the men after that. Sailors were a superstitious breed—life at the mercy of the most savage of elements made certain of that. Even though they were silent, Javier could almost imagine what they were thinking. Ghost ships. Vampires. Spirits. Curses. Things that threatened both the body and the soul.

  He chuckled. Every army platoon had its token believer in the occult, the man who kept trying to stop them from walking under ladders or talking about the merest possibility of having something bad happen to them. The one who refused to stay in room 175 of a clinic one time because the digits, when added up, equaled thirteen. But even those guys seemed paragons of stability when compared to the sailors he’d been around.

  The next room held some kind of big tank. Probably a boiler vat of some sort, but Javier really couldn’t tell. The only thing about it that called attention to itself was the fact that it was a pristine white color, and looked out of place in the grimy green room. It must be some new piece of equipment allowing the owners of the vessel to lower costs or make more money somehow, probably by processing fish heads. He shuddered.

  Then it hit him.

  “Wait.” He held up his hand.

  His troops stopped.

  “Do you notice something about this place?”

  “It’s a factory?” one of the sailors said tentatively.

  “Right, a fish factory. Now, if I told you we were going into a place where fish were crushed and cut and stored and fell onto the floor, what’s th
e first thing you’d say?”

  “That you should watch out for the smell,” one laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  The men shifted as they realized what he was aiming at. While the ship was grimy and well-used, with ancient dirt coating the underside of everything, it only smelled faintly… and not particularly of fish. What should have been an overwhelming presence, a nearly physical entity… wasn’t.

  That was what had been bugging him, the sense that something was off. He’d entered the factory space braced for the smell of decomposing fish, even if only unconsciously. When it hadn’t hit them, the feeling of wrongness persisted. The relief of not having to smell the fish had overcome any alarm bells that might have been going off in his head.

  “Be careful,” he told his men, “I want you to work in teams of two. You come with me,” he pointed at the sailor who’d answered the question. “You two, stay by the door to the stairs. No one gets out, and no one comes in without me knowing it.”

  The banter disappeared completely. He wondered if he was overreacting, but then silenced his doubts. Better to overreact and live to tell the tale. There was something off about this ship, they’d known that. On land, he would never have charged in with his troops making jokes… but on land, places that felt off were usually riddled with drug smugglers’ tunnels—and often with the smugglers themselves. This was a much more subtle business.

  They now advanced with sidearms drawn and a companion covered each person in charge of checking out a room from the door. The shadowy light hadn’t changed… but now that he was certain that it held a sinister secret, it felt darker to him.

  They checked another room. As far as Javier could tell, it was the last in the bow sector; an empty storeroom with light grey walls and four boxes sitting inside. The boxes contained plastic sheeting, probably for one of the industrial processes.

  They were about to turn away when one of the men stopped and looked at the base of the back wall.

  “Colonel, have a look at this,” the man whispered.